Posted on 08/22/2005 3:29:51 AM PDT by Pharmboy
At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being?
The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can explain.
Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher being at work in the world.
In one often-cited argument, Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and a leading design theorist, compares complex biological phenomena like blood clotting to a mousetrap: Take away any one piece - the spring, the baseboard, the metal piece that snags the mouse - and the mousetrap stops being able to catch mice.
Similarly, Dr. Behe argues, if any one of the more than 20 proteins involved in blood clotting is missing or deficient, as happens in hemophilia, for instance, clots will not form properly.
Such all-or-none systems, Dr. Behe and other design proponents say, could not have arisen through the incremental changes that evolution says allowed life to progress to the big brains and the sophisticated abilities of humans from primitive bacteria.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Before the Scopes trial, one could have said the opposite:
The only thing (evolution) is really trying to do is tarnish (creation/ID/Christianity) sufficiently to get politicians to open the doors to stealth teaching of you know what in public schools...
I can just picture an (evo) "teacher" nodding his/her head and saying "Absolutely" when a student asks, "Does that mean (one race is superior to another?" or "Does that mean Social Darwinism is true?")
Would you also complain about arrogance if the subject were being allowed to do surgery without advanced training instead of critiquing evolution without training?
Shall we change the "No true Scotsman" fallacy to "No true Bible-reader"?
Irrelevant. Anything can be accepted without recourse to the Almighty, including that there are tiny people in my salt shaker.
Indeed, Scripture doesn't address rights as we see them. There was no right to life in the Bible -- God had the Israelites wipe out whole towns.
This is a purely cursory, surface analysis of what happened in ancient Israel. God did not have the Israelites wipe out towns on a whim -- there was always a compelling reason, and in fact, the Israelites were consistently shown to be far more merciful than their neighbors were in general, and especially in such cases. The history of the Old Testament shows a gradual ratcheting back of the use of violence and a steady advance of human rights that culminates with the New Testament.
An example of what I'm talking about is the "eye for an eye/tooth for a tooth" rule that moderns mistakenly see as a mindless cry of bloodlust and vengeance. Quite the opposite: This was another case of exhorting the people to let cooler heads prevail when administering punishment. In the Ancient Near East you generally lived by the code of the gangster: You put one of mine in the hospital I put seven of yours in the morgue, and so on. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was actually: "Hey, hold on everybody, let's let the punishment be proportionate to the crime. One eye for one eye, not seven or seventy eyes for one eye, okay?"
There was no right to liberty in Scripture -- slavery was readily accepted, and anyone not toeing the party line could be, and often were, killed.
It wasn't readily accepted, and remember that the Israelites were themselves slaves in Egypt and were constantly reminded of this by God. Their slaves were actually often taken as another demonstration of mercy (rather than killing them with the rest) and God commanded that they be treated reasonably, very UNLIKE how they were treated in Egypt. As one example, the commandment to observe the Sabbath (one day off from work) applied even to the Israelites' animals, so their slaves were no exception.
There was no right to property in the Bible -- the Israelites stole an entire region from the folks living there purely on God's command.
There was always a genuinely compelling reason for taking the land beyond mere taking land for the sake of greed and expansion, so your implication that these commands were given on a mindless whim by God is incorrect.
If you study the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East in general, it becomes clear that in the context of their time and place, the Israelites were far from barbaric as you are suggesting but were instead actually on the cutting edge of human rights. (As another example, they were the only people in the region that forbade human sacrifice.)
"Rights" are a human concept derived from enlightened self interest.
Which is another way of saying that "rights" are just a meaningless illusion accidentally created by the movement of meaningless molecules in the meaningless brains of meaningless beings in a meaningless universe. You make my point for me.
A quintessentially alchemical viewpoint.
Four Food Groups: pizza, cola, burger, ice cream.
Hmmm, but if they have been taken by force doesn't that mean they have been repudiated?
It just doesn't make any sense to say that you have the right of free speech but you just can't exercise it under this regime. You don't have it - it's as simple as that.
I wonder. I read the same books they did, and I got a completely different message from them. Methinks that "being guided by the Holy Spirit" often means the donning of rose-colored glasses.
Creationists don't in general define "species" though. However, the last definition of "kind" was equivalent to "genus" (as of yesterday.)
Indeed. He wanted the Israelites to take these folks lands and property, and it wouldn't do to have any pesky survivors around to dispute the claim.
I thought I read on one of these threads that it was family. That way everyone fit nicely on the ark.
Which one has mo' hair?
It means you are fully justified, with violence if necessary, to revolt against scum abridging those rights. You've never read the preamble to the DOI I take it because if you had the answer would have been self evident.
If someone's holding a gun to your head, do you still have the "right" to life, liberty, and property?
Of course you do. You just have to have the balls to take the gun away from him and blow his head off. You're asking questions that are silly. You have a right to life, if some mook murders you, he doesn't take the right he takes your life.
BMCDA hit the nail on the head by saying that it's not the actual rights that can't be taken away, but the desire.
I'd say he hit his thumb. The right can never be taken away, rights are non consumables, but your life, liberty and property can, if you let them.
Ad hominem. Try again.
It's not ad hominem, it's a fact. Liberals and leftists favor the "social construct" over inalienable rights. Calling it ad hominem doesn't change that fact, it simply means you're either bereft of an argument or you favor the "social construct" where majorities decide what rights favor whom they want to favor.
70 biologists. World-stinking-wide.
***It doesn't matter that they're a small minority, it matters whether or not they are arguing from the facts using the scientific method. When Richard Feynman was pushing his subatomic theory, he was the only one for a while. It turned out he was right, and the accepted evidence against his position was wrong. Using your line of reasoning, we would deny him the voice (and the consequent Nobel Prize) because he was such a small minority.
70 biologists. World-stinking-wide.
***It doesn't matter that they're a small minority, it matters whether or not they are arguing from the facts using the scientific method. When Richard Feynman was pushing his subatomic theory, he was the only one for a while. It turned out he was right, and the accepted evidence against his position was wrong. Using your line of reasoning, we would deny him the voice (and the consequent Nobel Prize) because he was such a small minority.
>> Now, we've pretty much determined on these threads that interpretation of Scripture is purely subjective<<
Interpretation is subjective. So true. The scripture itself, however, is not. And just because there are 42 different opinions, and therefore at least 41 are wrong, it does not follow logically that all 42 must be wrong.
Time will tell, of course.
Are you incapable of logical thought? Or do you simply fall back on feel-good platitudes when you have nothing else to say. Do you have any idea of the meaning of "enlightened self-interest?" That you airily dismiss whole fields of ethics and philosophy as the "movement of meaningless molecules in a meaningless universe" does not speak well of your intellectual abilities.
Depends on how you define "mo' hair." Could be Moe himself, or it could be Larry.
It just doesn't make any sense to say that you have the right of free speech but you just can't exercise it under this regime. You don't have it - it's as simple as that.
If there is no God, true.
If there is a God, you get your rights back and theirs are taken away forever (barring repentance of course), so your rights are in fact permanent and eternal, they are just momentarily on hold.
How pollywogs evolved into pussycats could not possibly be farther from the day to day concerns of modern existance.
*** I like what you had to say & how you said it. Hopefully it survives the fire of criticism of the reasoning behind it.
This is stupid. If somebody steals your Ford Truck, has your right to own a Ford Truck been repudiated? Of course not, you haven't lost your right to property, you just let some mook steal it and then consoled yourself with the 'fact' that your right to property had been repudiated.
It just doesn't make any sense to say that you have the right of free speech but you just can't exercise it under this regime. You don't have it - it's as simple as that.
Another one who never read the preamble. What the preamble is telling you is to arm yourself and your fellow citizens and revolt against those who would abridge your rights. Sadly more and more folks either don't understand that or they don't care.
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